your holy city has become a wilderness
by philippedepoitiers
Summary: "Please!" he sobbed, but there was no reply; the statue said nothing, and Leporello was left with the knowledge that he was just a man, crying on his knees in front on a stone monument that terrified him.
1. chapter one

It had been an easy winter.

Leporello had heard it put down to many things by many people. Donna Anna and Don Ottavio both suspected that it was a favourable wind off the Atlantic to the west, while Masetto thought it was a more favourable wind from Continental Europe to the north. On the one occasion when she had written to him from the nunnery, Elvira had posited that it was down to a favourable easterly wind off the Mediterranean.

Leporello had his own suspicions, of course. He thought – in fact, he knew – that it was down to Don Giovanni being unceremoniously dragged down to Hell the previous year. It wasn't the only change that The Event (as Leporello referred to it, unable as he was to explain it, even to himself) had brought about, but it was the only one that didn't keep Leporello up all night.

The change in the weather had brought about a corresponding change in fortunes of the area. It was almost entirely farming land surrounding the late Don Pedro's estate, which now, since Don Giovanni had died without known issue (although Leporello was sure there must have been a child running around somewhere, probably in Spain or Italy), had devolved, along with Don Giovanni's former estate, to Don Ottavio and Donna Anna. Other than the change in ownership, however, this had brought about very little actual change. There were still fields to be tilled, animals to be tended, and children to be cared for, and very little in the Spanish countryside itself had changed.

Other than the fact that he was now no longer Don Giovanni's manservant, given that Don Giovanni was not around to _have_ a manservant, and instead performed many of the same duties (with the exception of the Catalogue, much to his relief) for Don Ottavio and sometimes for Donna Anna, the biggest change in Leporello's life (even though the change was hardly to _his_ life) was the fact that Zerlina and Masetto had had a son. He was around three months old now, and his name was Pedro, after Donna Anna's father. However, there was work to be done for both Zerlina and Masetto, and therefore the baby occasionally needed to be taken care of by somebody other than one of his parents.

Sometimes, Pedro could be farmed out to other villagers, but on this particular day it appeared that he couldn't have been, so Leporello had been carrying a very excitable three-month-old baby around all day, while supervising events in Don Giovanni's old house. He had been here from time to time, of course, but usually he couldn't bring himself to go any further than the hallway. But he had had to put Pedro on the floor to explain to a maid exactly where a particular room was, and by the time he had finished his explanation, Pedro had crawled away.

The maid had immediately dropped everything to go and search the gardens and grounds, because an out-of-place baby would be especially vulnerable there, while Leporello, being more familiar with the house, was left to look for baby Pedro there. Of course, every door in the place was open, and of course, this included the doors to every cupboard, so half an hour later, an extremely dusty and annoyed Leporello and the maid reconvened in the entrance hall.

"I couldn't find him at all outside." The maid was holding out the tails of Leporello's coat in an attempt to brush the worst of the cobwebs and assorted fluff from a house which had stood empty for a year, while Leporello trie to shake out and generally dust off his cuffs and sleeves. "Are you…are you sure he could be here?"

"Am I–" Leporello just about held back from immediately ordering her out. "Was I or was I not _holding_ him when you came and started _talking_ at me?" He didn't, however, hold back from snapping at her.

"Yes, but–" The maid unwisely attempted to get a word in.

"And did I or did I not _put him on the ground_ –" He stomped over to where he had been standing, wrenching his coat out of her hands as he did so and nearly sending the poor girl flying "– _exactly here_?" he demanded, and then buried his face in his hands. "God, he's only just _crawling_ ," he said, to himself. "How fast can a _crawling infant_ be?" The maid didn't know what to say or do in this situation, so she remained silent and slipped out of the still-open door.

Leporello stood, in the middle of the hallway, with his head in his hands for a good couple of minutes, until he finally managed to collect himself enough to start looking for Pedro again. If he had even noticed that the maid was there to begin with in his plight, he certainly didn't find himself missing her presence. He had only checked half the rooms in the house, and he had been going around meticulously closing all of the doors after equally meticulously checking each room.

This left him with the right side of the house left to check. Four rooms, compared to the seven or eight on the left side. And if he couldn't find Pedro there, then he could just go and throw himself off the roof.

Leporello's old rooms, of which there were two, were on the right side of the house along with the kitchen, and, of course, they were incredibly cluttered. Leporello had habitually collected any old things that he was able to accumulate, and these had built up in the two small rooms that he had occupied for years. He had left in a hurry, taking only a change of clothes and some possessions that he couldn't bear to be without, and the rooms had the look of somewhere that a man in a frenzied panic had whirled through in a hurry, but they also had the look of a place that did not contain any babies.

He slammed the door as he left and stormed through to the kitchen. Fortunately for him, the kitchen was fastidiously tidy, and it was immediately obvious that Pedro wasn't in there. Leporello was able to run through to the door leading through to the final room that he hadn't searched, but he stopped dead when he remembered what was behind that door.

Behind the final door, which was half open and that Leporello was positioned behind in such a way that he couldn't see through into the room, was the dining hall in which Don Giovanni had been dragged down to Hell. Leporello could still remember the precise series of events that had lead up to Don Pedro, or rather an apparition that looked like Don Pedro, coming into the room wailing about repentance. The rest of that evening, and the rest of that year, was an image in his mind that still made the bile rise in the back of Leporello's throat.

But if Pedro _was_ through there, which Leporello very much hoped that he was, he was probably scared, and as much as he could be an unrepentant bastard, Leporello couldn't stand to see a child or an infant upset. Swallowing the rising horror that was building in his stomach, he pushed open the door.

Much to Leporello's relief, Pedro was sat in the middle of the floor, playing with a scorched book that was clamped in his chubby fist, that Leporello vividly remembered dropping on the door when he had run to hide under the table. He swooped in and grabbed the baby, afraid of something that he couldn't quite identify, and wrenched the book out of Pedro's hand. Upset to both have been grabbed so unexpectedly _and_ to have been robbed of what he thought was a brilliant toy, Pedro immediately started wailing.

Leporello took a faltering step towards the table and hopped up onto it. He settled Pedro on his lap and bounced the baby up and down on his knee until he stopped wailing and started looking around his again. "There, now," he said, and then started digging around in his bag for something to entertain Pedro with once he stopped crying. He finally managed to find something that wasn't either of immense sentimental value or highly inappropriate (or both) – a small gilt-silver hand-mirror stolen from God-knows-which of Don Giovanni's "conquests" – and held it out to baby Pedro, who immediately grabbed at it and shoved it into his mouth.

"Lovely," Leporello teased, tickling the baby until he stopped sniffling and started giggling, and also relinquished the mirror again. Leporello wiped it clean on his waistcoat, and then put it back into his bag, now alongside the book he had retrieved.

In the middle of the table, just behind Leporello now that he bothered to look around, was Don Giovanni's old pistol. Leporello hadn't seen it in a year and he hadn't even thought about it, but for some reason he suddenly found himself aching to retrieve it; it felt wrong just to leave it here. So, putting Pedro on his hip and holding onto him around than simply setting him on the table where he could just crawl off, he pivoted around, grabbed it, and shoved it into his bag before Pedro could take note of its interesting design, because a baby with a gun was the last thing he wanted to have in his life.

There were probably more of Don Giovanni's old possessions hanging around in the old palace, and suddenly Leporello wanted to go and collect them. He looked down at Pedro, who still seemed to be awake and alert, and then out of the window to try to gauge the time. The sun was starting to set, but it wasn't yet dark enough that Masetto would be home, or that Zerlina would be starting to worry. In other words, he had enough time to explore.

Holding Pedro on his hip so that the baby could look around and he still had access to at least one arm, Leporello got back up off the table and pushed open the door that lead through from the dining hall to the hallway where he had put Pedro down in the first place. The maid hadn't returned, so he headed up the stairs instead, slightly unsteady as he was holding baby Pedro with both arms. Pedro, inclined to start grabbing at anything that was at his eye level, immediately took hold of Leporello's cravat, and, because he was a baby, he also immediately put it in his mouth. Leporello sighed tolerantly, and gently eased his clothing out of the baby's grasp, but otherwise he did nothing else.

Despite the stress that Pedro had caused him, he was enjoying looking after him: Pedro was a happy, curious, and healthy baby, who rarely cried (unless he was particularly startled, such as by being grabbed by his stressed babysitter), taking after both his mother and his father in different ways. Leporello never wanted children, and although he had toyed with the idea he had never even married and hadn't had _any_ romantic interaction with a woman since before Don Giovanni's death, nor had he wanted to, but he was usually happy to look after Pedro. Mostly, this was because he could give him back at the end of the day.

Leporello didn't know what to expect when he went upstairs. Although he had lived with Don Giovanni for years and had therefore at one point known the whole house to the point that he had been able to navigate it with his eyes closed, there was something eerie about it being completely empty and full of cobwebs, with every surface covered with thick dust. He swiped his hand over a sideboard, and Pedro watched, entranced, as the dust played through a sunbeam coming in through the window. He laughed and clapped, and Leporello did it again.

"Simple pleasures, eh?" He turned Pedro to look at him and stuck his tongue out. Pedro laughed, and Leporello laughed too. "Shall we get on?" he suggested.

The first door was through directly to what had been Don Giovanni's chambers. As soon as Leporello opened the door, a startled cat ran through and down the stairs. Pedro made a happy noise, and Leporello just stared after the animal before shaking his head and going through the door.

The cat had made its bed on what had been Don Giovanni's bed, having ripped up the pillows and the old quilt into a nest. _His Lordship won't be impressed_ , some part of Leporello that still considered itself to be Leporello's manservant said, before immediately silencing itself again. Leporello set Pedro down on the bed, because his arm was starting to fall asleep, and also because there were some things which he thought Don Giovanni would not want to be on display in the room.

He took the mirror back out of his bag again and gave it to Pedro to play with. Pedro laid on his back and thumped the mirror against the mattress, holding onto it tightly by the handle. Leporello supposed that this must have been adequate entertainment for a three-month-old baby. It also didn't escape his mind that watching a three-month-old baby hitting a mirror against a bed was also strangely amusing to a twenty-six-year-old man.

The first things that Leporello thought he probably ought to rescue from the house were Don Giovanni's swords and daggers. The sword that Don Giovanni had usually carried around itself was quite simple to look at, clearly an implement made for stabbing and occasional slashing if need be rather than for aesthetics, and the older one which Leporello had usually wielded looked even less aesthetically pleasing.

The daggers, on the other hand, were clearly much more designed with appearance in mind, although Leporello knew from experience that they were as sharp as they were handsome. He still had a scar from the one currently in his right hand, going across his chest from accidentally startling his master a few years ago.

There were various other weapons in the house, but these four had been Giovanni's favourites and Leporello's favourites, so Leporello felt that he had to take them. The two daggers were stashed away in his bag, but he wasn't sure of what to do with the swords. One of them was still attached to its leather baldric, which Leporello strapped to his left hip, but the other one he would have to carry, along with a baby, and his bag.

Rather than thinking more about the logistics of removing it, Leporello picked Pedro up again, and immediately got beaten over the head with the mirror for taking the trouble. Leporello carefully took it from the baby and turned the reflective side to face Pedro in the hopes of distracting him from further bludgeoning.

Much to Leporello's delight, Pedro was immediately fascinated by his own reflection, moving and watching this new, foreign baby move too, and laughing gleefully. Leporello laughed and danced from foot to foot with the baby, making him giggle more. Leporello took the baby over to the door, leaving the unattributed sword on the bed and pushing open the door that lead through to Don Giovanni's dressing room.

Fortunately for Leporello's already fragile nerves, no feral animals sped out of the door, but he still looked around the room in the twilight for a moment before carrying the baby in. Pedro was immediately delighted by the sight of his reflection in the mirror of the dressing table and pointed excitedly at what he saw as a new playmate.

"Who's that?" Leporello gasped with mock surprise. "Shall we wave?" he asked, although he wasn't entirely certain that Pedro understood the concepts of either "who", "that", or "waving". Still, he gently picked up Pedro's hand to show him how to wave to his reflection.

"That's you!" Leporello said, now equally as delighted as the infant. Pedro, not keen to be left out of whatever they were celebrating, made a joyful sound as Leporello looked around for any things that his Master might not want to be left lying around.

There were a couple of keepsakes from his former lovers, but there was nothing incriminating. However, some of Don Giovanni's old jewellery had been passed down through generations, and Leporello would have felt immensely guilty if any of it had been stolen, although he knew how poor his former master's relationship with his family (or what remained of it when they met) had been. He put what he knew had been Giovanni's mother's wedding ring into his pocket, because he would never have been able to forgive himself if he had lost it and put the rest of the jewellery that would have been of sentimental value into his bag.

This was as far as Leporello could bear to explore, even though Pedro was overjoyed to be able to explore what was to him an exciting new playground. His eyes were beginning to mist up looking at all of these things which had belonged to a man who, although he knew how to make Leporello's life a misery, also knew how to bring him immense joy.

He quickly turned before he was able to start crying, the sword now attached to his hip knocking against his thigh, and hurried back through, picking up the sword as he passed back through the bedroom. Pedro didn't seem to know that anything was amiss, even as Leporello rushed back down the stairs.

He was surprised, when he opened the door, to find Don Ottavio and Donna Anna waiting outside for him. He didn't quite know what to say, either about the fact that he had clearly been snooping around in his former master's home with a three-month-old infant _or_ about the fact that he was visibly nearly crying, but luckily neither Ottavio nor Anna questioned him.

"Hello, darling!" Anna, like Leporello (but unlike Ottavio) didn't want to have children. However, she, also like Leporello, adored Pedro. Even though there was a considerable disparity in their ranks, she had bonded especially with Zerlina during the time that they had known each-other, and she and Don Ottavio had even been present at Zerlina and Masetto's wedding, along with Leporello, and Pedro was named after Donna Anna's father even though neither Zerlina nor Masetto had ever knowingly met the Commendatore during his life.

"May I take him?" Anna asked.

Leporello nodded, not trusting his voice not to crack, and once Pedro had been safely transferred into Donna Anna's arms he hung back with Don Ottavio. Leporello had sometimes found Ottavio's inability to hold a conversation frustrating, especially going from a master with whom conversation could be so natural to being in Don Ottavio's service. However, when Leporello was upset he couldn't help but be relieved by the companionable silence as they began the walk back to the village to return Pedro to his parents.

Unfortunately for Leporello, the walk back to the village took them past the graveyard with the statue of the Commendatore. Anna, walking a little way ahead of Ottavio and Leporello, pointed the statue out to baby Pedro, who probably didn't understand the phrase "you're named after him", but was happy to "wave" at the statue when directed how to by Anna. Leporello still couldn't look at it, even though its face had softened since last year and it didn't seem to glare at him. Even being in its general vicinity sped his heartbeat up and made his limbs shake slightly.

In the sunset, though, was where he looked the least threatening. His marble brow seemed softer than by either daylight or by the moon, and he didn't seem to glare straight through Leporello, although he still seemed to fix his gaze dead into his face. But for some reason, Leporello felt the inclination to go and speak to the statue.

He made his excuses to Don Ottavio and asked him to apologise to Donna Anna for leaving so suddenly, waited until the couple were out of sight, and slipped into the graveyard. His hands were shaking, and his chest felt tight, but he still somehow found himself standing in front of the statue of the Commendatore.

The inscription on the front of the statue had worn away somewhat through a year of being constantly buffeted by whatever the Spanish weather deigned to throw at it, but Leporello could still read it; could still remember reading it for the first time as if it had just been five minutes ago. " _Dell'empio che mi trasse al passo estremo qui attendo la vendetta_ 1".

Leporello forced himself to ignore the inscription which felt like it was mocking him even after so much time, and his eyes instead lighted on the dates just below it, showing the span of the Commendatore's life. The date of his birth was just over fifty-five years ago, but Leporello's attention was drawn more to the date of his death. A year ago, that day.

Leporello felt like he had been punched in the face.

"I don't know what to do." For a moment, Leporello wasn't sure who, or what, he was talking to, but after a second, he realised that he was addressing the statue of the Commendatore. It was a sad state of affairs when the only person or thing that he could confide in was a ten-foot statue that he could barely look at without wanting to scream.

The statue was unrelentingly terrifying, but Leporello had never been able to talk to anybody about this. Even when Masetto and Zerlina had offered, he hadn't known how to even begin to explain what he was feeling, let alone have a full conversation about it. Now that he was standing in front of the statue of the Commendatore, though, he found the words came to him easily.

"I don't sleep," he started, aware that anybody passing would think that he was a madman, pacing up and down and talking to a statue, "not anymore; not for a year." He ran his hand over his forehead, as though he was trying to physically push the thoughts out of his head.

The statue stared at him, but it didn't do so judgementally. If anything, in fact, Leporello would have classified his expression as one of curiosity.

"Every time…" He was on the verge of tears. "Every time I try to sleep, I see it, and I hear it, and…" He rested his hands on the pedestal, now staring at the inscription. "I know it was his fault." The statue was staring at him again now. "And I know I shouldn't, but I _miss_ him," he said, in a very small voice.

If statues could raise their eyebrows, which this one undoubtedly could, Leporello was certain that this one would have done so. But it remained still, glowering down at Leporello as though simultaneously judging and pitying him.

"I despised him for years," he went on. "I wished him dead on the worst days and I wanted to leave so many times, but I never did and I–" But he was crying now, barely able to keep himself upright with his head buried in his hands and every inch of his body shaking. For a year he had been so desperately unhappy, and unable to fully conceptualise or even begin to put into words the reason, but he was now able to think straight again, and it felt like his entire mind and the careful walls that he had built around the source of his problems to keep himself from breaking down were unravelling around him.

"And you!" He levelled the sword accusingly at the statue, and it almost seemed to jump back, although that might just have been that Leporello was crying so much that he could barely see. "He…" He tried to get what he was saying straight. "You replied to him immediately, the second he talked to you. But I've been here for God knows how long and you won't even…" He couldn't say anything now, just sobbing and falling down onto his knees in front of the statue.

" _Please_!" he sobbed, but there was no reply; the statue said nothing, and Leporello was left with the knowledge that he was just a man, crying on his knees in front on a stone monument that terrified him.


	2. chapter two

It must have been at least five years, if not more, since Leporello had set foot in a Church. When he had been in Don Giovanni's service he had rarely wanted to, feeling that, even though he wasn't a direct participant in his master's womanising and betrayals, that his connivance and the fact that even if he didn't always _help_ he invariably turned a blind eye had tainted his soul along with his master's. Even now that he was no longer in Don Giovanni's service and hadn't been for a year, every time he considered starting to attend Church again he was assailed by the memory of the statue ordering his master to repent, and then casting him down to Hell when he refused.

But he had told Don Ottavio that he meant to attend Vespers, not sob at the feet of a statue, and slinking back with red eyes half an hour early would probably attract questions if not from Anna and Ottavio then from Zerlina and Masetto. He lingered outside of the door for a moment, ostensibly to take off his hat and straighten out his clothes but really to prepare himself to do something he hadn't even considered for a little over half a decade.

His dallying outside made him late, but nobody paid him any mind: he slunk through the door around half-way through the congregation chanting the Liturgia Horarum, and, unsure of whether to speak or not, he sat on a pew as far back as he could get, and he simply listened. "… _me festina. Gloria Patri, et Fili, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen. Alleluia_ 2,3 _._ "

Twenty-six years on, and he still didn't know what was being said. But whereas when he was a child, sitting with his brothers and his sister and being told to shut up for talking by his parents (or the people around them in the congregation) he could take comfort in the fact that all these people around him had been his friends, by merit of belonging to the same Church, he now found something unpleasant. Maybe it was the knowledge that these words were something close to something that he _might_ be able to understand but that he still couldn't compute them.

No matter how hard he tried to put out of his head the vague, creeping feeling of dread he had been feeling all evening, since he had first had to go in search of baby Pedro, he simply found that he couldn't. It had intensified the moment he had finally managed to stop himself from crying, something that he suspected he would return to as soon as he was able to go to bed. But he managed to get through the service of vespers, at least, without bursting into tears again, at least. He mostly achieved this by staring determinedly down at his knees and screwing his eyes shut and digging his nails into his thighs when his emotions threatened to overtake him.

He was left, staring upwards at the ceiling of the small Church and feeling even less like himself than he had when he had entered the building, for a good couple of minutes after the conclusion of the Mass, sufficiently far back that the monks and the two of three laypeople in the Church cleaning and snuffing candles either didn't care to disturb him or simply hadn't noticed them. As much as Leporello would much have preferred to be anywhere else, given how much more he felt like ripping off his own skin with every second he passed still in the Church, he was warm in here, and nobody was asking him any awkward questions about why he looked so miserable.

But real life still had to carry on, and the choir of monks were beginning to gather to rehearse and Leporello didn't want to get dragged into a conversation with a particularly talkative brother. So, after a few minutes trying to collect himself, he got up and propelled himself towards the door, and out into the graveyard. The statue of the Commendatore stared at him from just around the corner, far enough out of the way, at Donna Anna's insistence, that none of the congregation would have been able to see him crying in front of it (he hoped). He tried to look into its face but found himself freshly traumatised by the sight of it, so he instead hurried on his way, pulling the collar of his coat up as protection against the cold.

He couldn't face the idea of going either to Zerlina and Masetto's small home or back to Don Ottavio and Donna Anna's palace, for much the same reason. As much as he tried not to let them be, Leporello's emotions had always been immediately obvious to anybody who cared to look at him for more than a few seconds, and he was certain that his eyes would still be red and his face still pale, and even if he didn't _look_ like he had just been crying it would still be obvious.

So, instead of turning right as he left the church and taking the road which lead back home, he turned left and took the road into town. He didn't know what he was intending to do – maybe try his hand at finding a woman, maybe just get blind drunk – but he also knew that he had no interest in being near his friends, or Ottavio and Anna.

Alcohol seemed inviting.

He had never been a particularly heavy drinker before Don Giovanni had died, partly out of necessity (because his master was drunk half the time, and the half of the time he wasn't drunk he was trembling with hyperactivity) but also partly out of simple disinclination. He would sometimes have a glass of wine, or two if Giovanni had offered, but he had rarely got more drunk than slightly tipsy. Now, however, it was an unusual fortnight if he didn't get blackout drunk and wake up in a hedge with a blinding headache and no money at least once. But he still kept at it, no matter how miserable he felt with it, because it was more or less the only thing that could make him feel better.

The Black Lizard was a small, anonymous tavern where Leporello wasn't _known_ by the bar staff but was at least recognised. It mostly served sailors on shore leave, but its clientele had expanded in the last year and now most of the peasantry in the local villages – including both Leporello and Masetto, on the rare occasions that the latter had the opportunity to go out – went there to drink. The booze was cheap but potent, and on bad days Leporello could simply sit at a table in the corner and get blind drunk while on good days he could usually find some company.

Masetto was already at the Black Lizard when Leporello arrived, covered in dust and mud from tilling the earth to plant crops and looking utterly exhausted and slightly tipsy but still happy. For a moment Leporello considered just turning tail and leaving, but Masetto was usually good company, or could at least be counted on not to prod too much without the presence of his wife. Leporello tapped him on the right shoulder and sat down to his left, prompting Masetto to look first in the opposite direction, and then to jump when he saw Leporello sat beside him.

"You look cheerful," Masetto grumbled, with heavy sarcasm, but otherwise didn't press the subject further as Leporello tried to flag down a barmaid to order a drink. "Try her," Masetto suggested, after watching Leporello get completely ignored by three of them. This final barmaid didn't completely ignore Leporello and went off to get him and Masetto their orders.

Masetto stared across at him, and Leporello was suddenly completely aware of his body language. Once the barmaid had left, he had gone from sitting upright to slumping over the table with his shoulders hunched over and his forehead resting against the palms of his hands. "Hey." Masetto put his arm around him, and Leporello leaned away slightly. "What're you so miserable for?" Masetto was blunt, but he wasn't unkind.

Leporello tried for a few moments and a few stuttered sentence fragments to put what was amiss with him into words in a way that made sense, but even though it had been weighing so intensely on his mind all day when he tried to phrase it coherently he found that he simply couldn't. After a couple more attempts, with Masetto patiently not trying to cut in, he finally settled on, "It's been a year. Today."

For a second, Masetto wasn't sure of what to say, but he found the words quickly. "Ah." He waited for Leporello to look across at him, and then squeezed his shoulder in what he hoped would come across as a reassuring way. "Well…" He searched for a positive for a second. "We've known you for a year, then." This was not much of a positive, now that he had said it.

"And you've been married for a year," Leporello said, but he still sounded miserable.

"We're both too tired to celebrate!" Masetto laughed, glad to be back on safe ground. "What with Pedro getting into everything, and me working constantly, I'm not sure Zerlina and I could pick each other out of a crowded room."

Leporello managed to laugh, but it sounded wrong to his ears. "He's certainly a curious baby," he said. "We went exploring, while I was trying to sort out…" He jerked his head in the direction of Don Giovanni's mansion, not wanting to say the name of it out loud. "He wanted to grab everything." He indicated the chewed end of his cravat. "And put everything within range in his mouth."

"Sounds like Pedro, alright," Masetto laughed. "Did he behave himself otherwise?" Masetto always felt bad for inflicting the baby upon Leporello, even for a few minutes, given that he knew full well that Leporello had no interest in having children. But he also knew that Leporello genuinely adored Pedro.

"Well, he didn't try to pull my hair out," Leporello joked idly. "So, I think I would call it a success."

Masetto had been pleasantly tipsy by the time that Leporello had arrived, and now that he was onto his fourth drink he was beginning to surpass that, but Masetto was usually a pleasant drunk. He would slur his words, and his movement would be disorganised, sometimes to the point that he would accidentally slap whoever was sitting beside him, but he would never be knowingly or intentionally aggressive.

Leporello, on the other hand, would be either a very miserable drunk or a very aggressive drunk, depending on a factor, or a collection of factors, that Leporello couldn't quite understand or identify. Tonight, given that he had spent a good amount of the evening in tears, he knew that having more than one drink would probably instantly send him spiralling down into the depths of depression, but all he wanted to do was get extremely drunk.

Fortunately for him, Masetto was keeping an eye on him now that he knew what had Leporello so upset. He bought a couple of drinks for Leporello, ostensibly as a thank-you for taking care of Pedro that day but really so that he could pay off the barmaids to water down Leporello's drinks. Leporello, for his part, was completely unaware of this, being that he was getting increasingly miserable and was therefore unable to think about anything other than his current perceived plight.

As such, however, a particularly giddy Masetto and an obviously miserable Leporello were the last two people to leave the Black Lizard.

"Come back with me," Masetto slurred, using Leporello to hold himself up as they watched the proprietor of the Black Lizard lock up. He partly just needed somebody to lean on because he was convinced that if he tried to walk back he would just fall flat on his face, but he was also concerned that Leporello would be found face-down in the dock the next morning if he didn't take care of him.

When Leporello didn't immediately reply, Masetto pushed him further. "C'mon," he said. "Zerlina'll wanna' thank you for looking after the baby."

Leporello whined, but he couldn't be bothered to offer any protest. He was also aware of the fact that, if he tried to go back home, he would probably end up crying into a pillow all night which he didn't feel like doing. If he went back to call in on Zerlina (and deliver her one extremely sloshed husband) he could put off being on his own for another hour, maybe two. And maybe he could play with baby Pedro if he was still awake.

So he checked to make sure he still had everything that he should have had in his bag and his coat pockets, and then dragged Masetto upright, as he had started to slump against Leporello's shoulder. "A'right. C'mon then."

"'S the wrong way," Masetto slurred as they set off.

"No, it isn't!" Leporello said, actually laughing now. "You…" He pointed in the direction they were trying to go in. " _You_ live over _there_. _I_ live over _there_." The concepts of "here" and "there" seemed to be lost on Masetto, being that he was incredibly drunk, but he went along with it – which was fortunate for them both, given that Leporello was completely right and Masetto had tried to drag them off in the wrong direction.

If they were sober, it would have taken Masetto and Leporello around ten minutes to walk home – fifteen if they really dawdled on the way back. But because they were both completely smashed and Leporello was a little argumentative when he was drunk at the best of times, which this was not one of, it took around three quarters of an hour. They both managed to keep fairly quiet in case Pedro was sleeping, but he tried to crawl out of the door and onto the street the instant they opened the door.

Leporello was less drunk and therefore steadier on his feet, so he immediately swooped in again to pick Pedro up before he could make his escape. Masetto picked Zerlina up, tried to spin her around, but very nearly ended up dropping her on the floor. Now all of them were laughing, including Leporello and Pedro. Zerlina braced one arm against the wall to keep herself and Masetto upright.

Leporello busied himself playing with Pedro until Zerlina finally remembered that they had a guest. "Are you staying the night?" She was partly motivated by the fact that Pedro was absolutely fascinated with Leporello and having him in the house meant that she would be able to have some peace without an infant on her hip constantly asking for attention – but she also liked Leporello's company and would have felt bad to have forced him to walk back in the dark.

"I don't want to impose," Leporello said, bouncing Pedro on his hip to keep him occupied when he wasn't the absolute centre of attention. He also wanted to go home and have some peace, because as much as he liked to be around Masetto and Zerlina he was suddenly finding their joyfulness cloying and frustrating given how miserable he was.

"You wouldn't be imposing," Zerlina said, not picking up on the fact that Leporello would have loved to leave but didn't want to seem impolite. "And–" She indicated Pedro, who was clinging onto Leporello with both hands– "he certainly seems to want you around. And I'm only motivated by selfishness." She grinned, and Leporello supposed that he had to stay now.

He spent half an hour, while Zerlina cleaned and cooked and Masetto went to bed, entertaining baby Pedro by sitting on the floor with the baby on his lap and reading to him from the book he had picked up in Don Giovanni's mansion. When Pedro tired of the story (which was fair, because even Leporello had been starting to find it dull), this turned into Leporello being beaten over the head with the silver hand-mirror again.

"Oh, gosh!" Zerlina returned from her cookery half-way through Leporello and Pedro playing this "game" with the mirror, which amounted to Pedro trying unsuccessfully to bludgeon his babysitter to death, and Leporello occasionally putting his hand up to shield himself from the worst of the blows. Fortunately, being that he was three months old, Pedro had very little strength _or_ hand-eye co-ordination, so Leporello was finding it more entertaining than worrisome. "You're really far too tolerant," Zerlina gently took Pedro off Leporello's lap, and carefully pried the mirror out of the baby's chubby fist.

"Oh, I've had far worse," he joked. "He's _far_ more emotionally developed than my master was," he added, but then immediately felt guilty for saying it even though Don Giovanni was no longer there to hear it.

Zerlina, on the other hand, was more than happy for an excuse to sit down, so she sat on the floor beside Leporello with Pedro on her lap. As soon as she started rocking him Pedro fell asleep, which left the two adults free to talk. "It must have been around a year now, though," she said.

"Exactly a year," Leporello confirmed. "Which means _you've_ been married for a year – don't tell me you'd forgotten."

"It all blurs together with such a young baby," Zerlina said. "Thank you for looking after him."

"I like looking after him." Leporello shrugged. "I had four siblings, and I was the oldest; I'm used to babies." Or he _had_ been, until he had gone to look for work when he was fifteen. Even though he would have been as good of a nursemaid than the girl the first family he worked for employed, he had hardly taken care of a baby or a child since, until Pedro had been born (unless he counted his years of trailing around after Don Giovanni and solving all the problems he caused. Which Leporello sometimes did).

"I was an only child," Zerlina said. "And Masetto was the youngest, so neither of us knew what to do when he was born." Fortunately, Leporello had proved to be more than competent as a babysitter, and most of the people who lived nearby knew how to look after children and would take care of Pedro for at least a couple of hours if Masetto and Zerlina needed them to. Finally, Don Ottavio desperately wanted children but Donna Anna refused to have them even though she too loved Pedro, so the fact that Zerlina and Masetto had a child had meant that he could live vicariously through them.

Zerlina soon started to find even keeping her eyes open, let alone talking, utterly exhausting so she and Pedro retired to bed after finding a quilt for Leporello, who was more than happy to sleep on the floor. ("I've slept in far worse places in Don Giovanni's service.")

Leporello managed to sleep for what must have been an hour and a half, which was just about as long as he could usually sleep at a stretch unless he ended up sleeping for eighteen hours, which also happened some days. He hated both options equally. When he woke up, he considered staying for the rest of the night as Zerlina and Masetto had said he could for a few minutes, but then Pedro started screaming and he realised that he couldn't bear to, so he tried to sneak out as quietly as he could.

When neither Zerlina nor Masetto came to find out who was apparently breaking into their house in the dead of the night, Leporello started to make his way home. Once again, his route took him past the Church, but in the dark and under a new moon he couldn't see the statue, so he didn't feel the need to hurry past it. Before he was quite aware that he had even been walking in that direction, he found himself in his old bed in Don Giovanni's palace.

When he tried to think about what he was doing back there, his mind tried to stop him from crossing the obvious ground towards how intensely he was missing his old master (and, really, his best friend, even though he hated to admit it even to himself) and directed him towards the cat that had shot out of the main bedroom when he and Pedro had been here earlier. Really, though, he knew that he was just being affected by the fact that it was the anniversary not just of the death of somebody that he cared deeply for but the anniversary of a deeply traumatic event.

Leporello was just starting to drift off to sleep in a bed that somehow felt both familiar and completely alien after a year not having even considered returning here when he became aware of a commotion; loud crashing and hissing sounds coming from somewhere in the palace. He didn't want to get up because he was utterly exhausted after the day he had had, but if that cat from earlier was still in the palace he wanted to get it out sooner rather than later, to prevent it from destroying any more of the soft furnishings. He knew that Don Ottavio would be _extremely_ unimpressed if he knew that a cat was destroying what was now his property.

He did indeed find the cat when he crept out of the door holding a candle, but it was curled up outside his door, completely silent and asleep. Leporello kicked lightly at it with his bare toes, not enough to hurt it but enough to startle it and it woke up, stared up at him, and then went back to sleep. Leporello tapped it again with his foot, but it ignored him. "Hey!" Still nothing. "Hey! Cat!"

Realising that he would need to physically remove the cat, Leporello sighed, put the candle down on the sideboard, and reached down to grab the animal, at which point it leaped up and ran towards the door to the dining hall. Even though the door was open, however, it stood at the doorframe, looked over its shoulder at Leporello, and started yowling at him.

"What?" Leporello asked, aware that he must have looked like a complete madman talking to a cat. "What do you want me to do?" The cat screamed at him again. "I'm not feeding you, mind. There's mice." He gestured, and a mouse skittered across the floor, directly in front of the cat, as if on cue. "See?"

But it appeared that food was not what his feline visitor was after, as it trotted back towards Leporello, grabbed the hem of his breeches in its mouth, and started trying to pull him over towards the door. "What are you doing?" Leporello leaned down and tried to detach the cat. When he managed to get the cat to stop trying to destroy his clothing, the yowling started up again. "If I pick you up will you stop?" he asked. The cat looked up at him. "Was that a yes?"

It appeared to be, as the cat stood up on its hind legs, putting its front paws up on Leporello's thighs and meowing in a less grating tone until Leporello bent down and picked the animal up in his arms. "Through there?" he asked, nodding towards the door. The cat purred in response, so Leporello assumed that he had it right.

As Leporello approached the door, he realised that, rather than being dark as it should be, there was a shaft of light coming from the dining hall. Leporello started shaking, suddenly terrified for what might be through there rather than frustrated to be dragging a demanding cat around. But the cat meowed up at him, gazing up at him, and then started licking his hand. "…Thank you?" He supposed that was meant to be comforting. He somehow managed to force himself through the door (mostly by closing his eyes so that he wouldn't have to see what was through there), but as soon as he went through the cat jumped out of his arms.

He convinced himself to open his eyes when the cat started all but screaming, and nearly fell to the ground in a dead faint when he saw what the cat was screaming at. There, in the middle of the room, in front of the dining table, stood the statue of Don Pedro, Il Commendatore.


	3. chapter three

Leporello had been through the initial shock of a moving statue being in his home a year ago, so he very rapidly went from being horrified by the statue being there to being furious that it would dare to return, after all the misery it had caused him and Giovanni.

"What are you doing here?" Leporello demanded, suddenly not scared but blazingly _angry_. He was levelling one of the two swords, which he had had the forethought to bring with him, at the statue, which just stared coolly down at him.

 _You asked me to return_ _._ The statue didn't physically _speak_ , which Leporello had failed to notice in his panic a year ago, but it somehow managed to get across what it wanted. _I should be asking you why you brought me here_ _._ The statue's words hummed painfully through Leporello's brain before the echo finally faded out. _Speak._

"You came back," Leporello pointed out. "You know why I as– why I _told_ you to return."

 _And even with all the celestial and earthly knowledge of the world at my disposal, I am unable to believe it_ _,_ the statue said drily. It raised its hand and Leporello reflexively took a step back, even though he was too far away for it to be able to touch him. The cat, puffed up to half its normal size and lashing its tail, moved between Leporello and the statue. _You should know better_ _._

"And yet I do not," Leporello said, feeling as though he was a particularly chastised child. "Besides which, you don't know my intentions, I–" Leporello did not need reminding that, in fact, the statue seemed to have complete knowledge of everything, so he cut himself off.

 _Well_ _?_ The statue continued to hold out its hand, but otherwise it made no move. If Leporello squinted, it almost looked like Don Pedro had in life – it just looked like a kindly, good-humoured gentleman, rather than a terrifying statue. Then its eyeballs (or what passed for its eyeballs) started glowing, and Leporello nearly fell over.

"Well what?" Leporello stopped looking directly at the statue, turning slightly to the side to save his eyes from gazing into what appeared to be two pits of fire, and dropping the sword to his side. "You were only too willing to send _him_ down to hell."

The statue just stared at him.

" _I_ was equally as complicit! In all of it! I helped him _find_ the women in the first place, I helped him seduce them, I got their families – their _husbands_ – out of the way! Why not send me down too?" Leporello continued, getting increasingly heated. "I helped him find men, too; sometimes I–" He stopped just short of his intended conclusion of that sentence, because even the cat seemed to be raising one eyebrow at him now.

 _Go on_ _?_ Of course the statue knew. Of _course_ it did; if it was a giant talking statue, why the hell _wouldn't_ it be omniscient? It was _perfectly_ logical, in the grand scheme of things.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

 _I needed to know._ Leporello opened his mouth to protest. The statue cut him off. _I needed to hear it from you, specifically._

"What?" Leporello said, growing increasingly angry and sarcastic. "So that you could be sure I wouldn't bring him back only to kill him again?"

 _I think he will have been through enough by that point._

"I'm not joking with you," Leporello said, and then levelled the sword at the statue when it failed to look sufficiently repentant. "Are you going to send me or not?" he asked.

 _You are barely armed and even less dressed_ _,_ the statue pointed out, in what would have passed for a paternal tone had it not been coming from a giant statue with swirling, glowing fire in place of eyes that seemed to be communicating telepathically. _However, once you are prepared, you may go._ Leporello could have cried with relief, but he just about managed to maintain his dignity.

The statue raised its hand, and Leporello tracked its progress with his eyes until it was pointing directly upwards, the statue's eyes glowing red and blue and purple as the floor started to open up between where Leporello and the statue stood. Leporello had to look away for fear that he might throw up, and as the chasm in the floor grew and grew, the statue's eyes began to dim. When the floor was fully open, the statue's eyes were completely black but Leporello somehow got the impression – even though it was physically impossible – that they were still glowing.

Leporello's eyes returned to the direct link to Hell in the floor when he was distracted by some movement near his feet. The cat, whose presence he had entirely forgotten while he had been arguing with the statue, had stepped forwards, and jumped down into the hole. Leporello hadn't seen before, but there was what looked to be a set of stairs, and the cat was perched, about three feet down, on one of those.

The steps themselves couldn't have been more than about half a foot in width, and they looked to be made of a very dark stone or metal that Leporello failed to identify. Now that he was sufficiently close to the edge of it, leaning over slightly to see what was down there, he could smell the familiar smell of burning, that was painfully familiar. He tried to put the memory of Giovanni screaming in pain and terror as he had been dragged down out of his head but he found that he couldn't.

Still, he was confident that he knew what he was going to need now.

He sped out of the room and back into the bedroom he had been sleeping in, where everything he had taken from the Palace the previous day was also stored, and hastily changed back into the clothing that he had been wearing the previous day. They still smelled of sweat, and of the incense from the Church he had been in, but they would have to do.

The weapons were more important.

He still had Giovanni's sword with him, which Giovanni would no doubt want to have back, but into his bag he also stuffed one of the pistols and the two daggers, because he knew he wouldn't be able to carry both swords. He tucked the other pistol, much more functional but much less pretty to look at, into his belt, and mentally cursed Giovanni for not carrying a shortsword, because he felt certain that he would immediately be divested of the one sword that he was able to bring as soon as he and Giovanni were reunited.

Now dressed and laden with enough weapons for two men, he returned to the dining room to find the statue gone without his having heard it leave, and the cat stood on the first step in the hole in the ground with its front paws resting on the floor of the dining room. Leporello approached cautiously and with his hand on the sword hanging at his hip but, when no demon lunged at him and no ungodly screaming or pain befell him, he started to feel a little less anxious.

When it saw that Leporello was going to do as he had been intending to, the cat started walking down the stairs, casting a look back over its shoulder to make sure Leporello was following. When he stood on the first step, almost frozen, it sat down on a step a few feet down facing him and started shouting at him.

"Alright," Leporello muttered, and started following the cat again.

About twenty feet passed without anything that was worthy of comment happening, and Leporello almost started to feel less anxious. He was still ready to leap with the sword at any demons that chanced to launch themselves at him, but his mouth was less dry, and he didn't feel as though his heart was beating at the base of his throat. As such, it took a good while before it occurred to him that he could feel the ground heating up beneath his feet through his boots.

The cat was no longer so much walking as lolloping a few steps at a time down into what certainly felt like the centre of the earth, and then stopping for a few seconds and bouncing around on the step it waited on in a way that almost seemed like Giovanni while it waited for Leporello. When he got close enough to it that he could definitely make its shape out in the low, red light being cast from god only knew where, Leporello bent down and picked up the cat so that it didn't have to walk on the hot ground and burn the delicate pads of its paws.

The cat meowed in protest and tried to get back down again to continue leading Leporello, but it seemed to be placated when Leporello pointed out, "Even I can walk down a flight of stairs, thank you." It hopped up from where he was holding it in his arms to sit across his shoulders. Leporello could hear and feel it purring close to his head and even though his throat was beginning to close up with fear he found it comforting.

When he was up sufficiently close to the cat that if he leaned his head sideways he could rest his head against its fur, Leporello could see two interesting things about the cat. The first was very obvious: it had massive canines, which slightly overhung its lower lip and gave it the appearance of something ancient and dangerous. Second, even though Leporello had thought beforehand that the cat was just a black cat, if he turned his head slightly to the side he could see dark grey spots in its fur. They hadn't been obvious when he hadn't practically had the cat in his face, but now that it was draped across his shoulders

He walked down the strange stairs for what felt like hours but couldn't have been more than about half an hour in silence, feeling increasingly nervous as the air around him heated and heated and became increasingly red. Leporello began to regret the thick coat that he was wearing, but at least it protected him from the claws of the cat draped over his shoulders. As they descended, the cat began to get more and more agitated and interested, and Leporello began to wonder if he should have asked the statue why the cat was there in the first place when he had had the chance.

Still, no time for that now – he had followed a cat down into Hell, much like he would have followed Giovanni down into Hell. If the consequences were disastrous, which he suspected that they could be, he had enough weapons for two people, and he knew how to defend himself. Besides this, the cat had yet to do anything that was particularly offensive, and it had managed to lead him to the statue of the Commendatore.

Leporello thought that he might be able to see what was at the bottom of the staircase now, although he suspected that it might just have been a trick of the eye. He had been walking in an eerie near-darkness for a considerable time now, his left arm braced against the side wall, which had been cool towards the top but was now blisteringly hot and felt like it was beginning to singe his fingertips and the palm of his hand. He pulled the slightly-too-long sleeve of his coat down to protect himself from the height and paused to allow the cat to resettle its weight.

He could hear something, or at least he _thought_ he could hear something. Coming up from somewhere deep within the ground was a low rumbling sound, mixed with what sounded to be hisses and roars and what Leporello sincerely hoped wasn't screams but still suspected was. He craned his neck down to see if he was just starting to hear things from the isolation, because it was deathly quiet underground, and was both curious and horrified to see that there was what looked like a harsh, bright glow coming from the bottom of the pit.

Suddenly, Leporello started to feel that he was being watched, and apparently the cat shared this sentiment. A quick tap on the cat's flank sent it jumping off Leporello's shoulders onto the ground, where it ran on ahead, and Leporello pulled the pistol from where it had been secured in the scarf around his waist he was using as a belt.

The cat had seemingly left him in the dust now, partly just in a tearing hurry to get to their destination but partly with its paws stinging from the blazingly hot ground, and Leporello also sped up despite the narrow steps. He tried to reassure himself that he had run down narrower spiral staircases in castle turrets in Don Giovanni's service, because the sorts of people who built castles were also the sorts of people who built tightly-wound staircases that he had to run up and down, but the stakes of this felt higher. There was no handrail that he could grab onto if he felt himself slipping, and there was further to fall. It looked like there was infinitely further to fall.

Fortunately, Leporello was wholly unafraid of heights.

He caught up to the cat after a few minutes of half-jogging down the staircase, if he could really call it a staircase given that it was becoming increasingly part of the walls, and it wasn't much longer before Leporello realised that yes, the sounds he thought he had been hearing _were_ the sounds of Hell. Suddenly, the full weight of what he was doing here felt as though it was place squarely on his shoulders. His hands were shaking, and he had to shove the pistol into his bag because he thought he would either drop it or vomit, neither of which he wanted to do.

He continued down, still running even though he was shaking, following the cat to God-only-knew-what, until he finally reached what looked like a flat area running untold number of metres off into the distance in front of and behind him. Leporello looked up, and realised that since he had been in the dining room of Giovanni's palace the hole he had been running down had broadened until it seemed that he was in a vast cave.

The flat area, at least, wasn't blazingly hot. The cat was lying down now, panting after the exertion of having to run down what probably amounted to a couple of miles of stairs, mostly at full pelt, and Leporello leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees to catch his breath again. He didn't notice what the cat was doing while he was trying to get back to himself, and therefore failed to notice it getting up and starting to hiss and lash its tail.

As such, the first warning that Leporello got that he had suddenly come under attack from something with wings, or rather from multiple somethings with wings, was when one started clawing at his shoulder. Instantly Leporello regretted putting the gun back in his bag as he drew the sword attached to his hip and started hacking at whatever was assailing him.

There turned out only to be two of them, what looked to him to be imps, small red humanoid creatures that would have reached about to the middle of Leporello's thighs, where his boots came up to. Clearly, they weren't pleased that their home was being invaded by a heavily armed man and a cat, and Leporello couldn't entirely blame them, but at the same time he wanted to be rid of them as soon as he could.

There was still one attacking the cat, which was trying to fight it off and seemed to be winning, to its credit, but Leporello still put the sword through the remaining imp's stomach and cringed at the smell of sulphur that it gave off as the cat shook it by the neck. The imps' dark yellow "blood", which stunk of sulphur and was unpleasantly hot and sticky to the touch, was now coating both Leporello's clothing and the cat's fur, and he felt certain that when they found Giovanni they would both be a sight for sore eyes.

He briefly allowed himself to think "that's if we _do_ find Giovanni", but he immediately pushed the thought away. Being negative at a time like this wouldn't help.

He followed the path along, the cat now trotting at his side, until he came to a narrow bridge that seemed to lead to another set of stairs on the other side. He had never liked heights, and he had never liked bridges, but his options were either to go across the bridge, which certainly did not look secure, or to fall fifty or more metres into a pit of boiling lava. The bridge seemed to be the safer option.

The cat seemed to have similar feelings to Leporello and jumped back up onto his shoulders via his arms when they reached the edge of the bridge. "If I fall in," Leporello pointed out, although he was certain that the cat couldn't understand what he was saying, "you will too." The cat cast him a look that seemed to say _oh will I?_ and Leporello tickled it under the chin before securing the sword back in the baldric on his hip.

The cat hung onto Leporello's shoulders with all four sets of claws and not for the first time Leporello was glad of the protection of his coat, even though he was getting unpleasantly hot in it. However, the two of them managed to get across the bridge unscathed, and the cat jumped elegantly down off Leporello's shoulders onto the other side before Leporello climbed across.

What Leporello had thought in the poor lighting might have been another set of stairs cut into the other side, now that he was close enough to them to get a good look at them, turned out to be a set of very narrow footholds, leading down about fifty metres into the bowels of the cave. Leporello made a mental note that this might be hard to traverse with Giovanni when they got back with him and began to follow the cat as it picked its way down.

Leporello noted that the cat could well have just picked its way down several smaller footholds that would have saved it several minutes of hopping, but it instead picked out a path that Leporello could also follow and waited for him on each of them as he weighed up his options. Thus, Leporello and the cat managed to reach the end of the wall that they had had to pick their way down and landed in the bowl of the cave.

All Leporello wanted was to find Giovanni, or at least he had thought until exactly that moment that he only wanted to find his former master. But now that he was on the floor of the cave, he realised that he didn't know how Giovanni was going to react to seeing him again. When he had been on earth and fairly content (although God knew that he had never been _happy_ ) Giovanni had been violent. Leporello didn't want to imagine what a year down in Hell could have done to his mood and his general mental health.

The cat seemed to know which direction they wanted to go in to find Giovanni, though, and Leporello was more than happy to follow it. It let him think about what he was going to do when he found Giovanni again, rather than think about the technicalities of finding him. The cat lead Leporello down a gentle slope, surrounded by tall, jagged shards of crystal twice the height of the average man, that Leporello thought would have been beautiful if they hadn't looked as though they could kill him if they touched him.

The slope that they had walked down lead to a large plateau that gave way to a vast lake that stunk of blood despite not being red. As Leporello approached it, the cat now walking by his side rather than ahead of it, it could see that it looked like it was churning or boiling, and as he walked closer still he realised that he was standing in front of a massive sea of boiling, molten lead. As they got close enough for Leporello to make out individual waves the stink of it, the combination of blood and boiling hot metal and whatever else was down here, became too much. Leporello had to cover his mouth and nose with the cuff of one of the sleeves of his coat.

Surely, Giovanni couldn't have been doing well down here. For one thing, he was far too precious – too proud of his appearance, too peacock-like – to tolerate somewhere he couldn't wash and shave, and where he didn't have access to good clothes, but he was also ridiculously sensitive to smells and heat, and this place both stunk horribly and was beyond uncomfortably hot. Leporello had only been here for a few minutes and he was already beginning to feel that he was suffocating, although he supposed that this _could_ have been because he was overdressed for the occasion. Giovanni had been down here a year, as he kept reminding himself or being reminded.

He knew, somehow, that Giovanni was nearby. He couldn't say what gave him this impression, or where "nearby" was, or even in which direction "nearby" was, but he still felt sure of it. The cat was looking around too, clearly trying to figure out which way to go, not that he could blame it in such a large place that he sincerely _hoped_ was completely alien to it (because he wasn't sure he needed a cat that originated from Hell to be hanging around him), which Leporello took to be confirmation of his suspicion.

Sure enough, the cat began to lead him along, parallel to the lake of lead which seemed to stretch off into infinity even though Leporello couldn't see anything or anybody nearby that might have been either Giovanni or somebody who might have been assailing Giovanni. He looked across again at the lake of lead but found that the lead had given way and he and the cat were now following the shore of a lake of either oil or animal fat, still boiling but now hissing, smoking and fizzling. Somehow, this was worse than the lead, and Leporello began to feel nauseous again.

They walked together for five minutes, Leporello getting increasingly anxious and coming up with increasingly ludicrous scenarios in his head for how this reunion would go, with imps occasionally swooping over Leporello's head but never daring to attack him or the cat. He supposed that word had got around that he had killed several of their kind when he had first arrived here. Swords must have been a rarity in Hell, which made sense.

Suddenly, after they had been walking along for what seemed like forever at a slow pace, the cat broke into a run, starting to yowl and scream as though it was being murdered even though Leporello could see no assailants anywhere nearby. Suddenly more terrified than he had been in years, Leporello ran after it and found no attackers, either visible or invisible, until he saw somebody collapsed on the shore of the boiling pit of oil.

He knew.

He knew that was Giovanni.

The cat reached him first, and started circling him, putting its front paws on his shoulders and upper arms and screaming in his ears as though trying to rouse him and Leporello began to genuinely fear that he had arrived too late and Giovanni was somehow already dead. Again. If he had even been dead in the first place. (He wasn't entirely certain of the technicalities of whether somebody who had been dragged down to Hell was dead or just no longer a resident.)

But Leporello's fears were allayed when the cat graduated from just pawing and screaming at Giovanni to scratching his shoulders and biting any exposed skin it could find, when he seemed to jolt. He swatted the cat away and rolled onto his other side, facing away from Leporello and hunching his body in as though to protect himself. Leporello wanted to approach him, but something stopped him as the cat jumped over Giovanni's shoulder and resumed pawing at him now that it had ascertained that he was alive and awake.

"What do you want?" Giovanni growled, and his voice sounded hoarse and completely unlike his usual smooth tone as he swatted the cat away. The cat returned as soon as he had stopped trying to get rid of it, and that was the point at which Giovanni seemed to register that it was a cat, a creature which Leporello assumed wasn't native to Hell.

Leporello could tell as Giovanni, still with his back to him, pushed himself into a half-upright position, still sitting dangerously close to the boiling oil but not seeming as if he cared any more, that whatever he had gone through down here had been traumatic. Back on earth, even when Giovanni was annoyed or worried or feeling any emotion other than happiness, he had still held himself nobly because he had been raised to it. But seeing him here, hunched over and trembling with the effort of keeping himself upright, if Leporello hadn't instinctively known his former master he would have assumed that he was some other man.

Finally, seeing that Giovanni was fully revived and conscious again, Leporello moved forward. He knew that Giovanni was jumpy at the best of times, which this was not, and so, once the cat had backed off, he walked around and crouched in front of Giovanni. For a second, if Giovanni had even noticed Leporello, he didn't react, but in one swift movement, he looked up, and registered who Leporello was.

There were several ways in which Leporello had imagined this reunion going. Somehow, however, being immediately punched in the stomach and pinned against the ground when he collapsed wasn't on the list, and he was too surprised to resist, even when Giovanni grabbed the sword at Leporello's hip from the baldric. In the grand scheme of things, anger wasn't unexpected. Fear, also, wasn't unexpected, even though Leporello had done his best to not scare Giovanni.

Giovanni had the sword poised over Leporello's throat in a way that reminded him of the utterly disastrous party a year ago when Giovanni had apparently conveniently forgotten to tell Leporello that he was only going to _pretend_ to try to murder him when something apparently occurred to him, or he abruptly realised something. His expression, previous aggressive and fearful to the point of seeming like some sort of feral animal, changed to something than Leporello was physically completely unable to identify or understand.

Just as Leporello thought that he was about to be killed by his old master, Giovanni threw the sword to the side and it only by chance didn't end up in the boiling oil where it would be useless to either man or beast and flung himself into Leporello's arms. Leporello didn't know what to do for a moment until he realised that this was Giovanni, and he had managed to find him again.


End file.
